Is the State Government any serious about environment degradation and building a fitting response to address it within whatever is our reach? The first step towards it would be to have our net defined policy on Environment which for years appeared to be never a serious issue to be discussed, deliberated upon and come out with an experts’ view to become our vision and ambition in tackling issues concerning the Environment which almost all countries are concerned about.
It, however, was only in the year 2010 that the State Government got a draft prepared through an agency and the task of perusing and finalizing the draft was taken up in 2011 by means of constituting a Technical Committee which was headed by the Chairman of the State Pollution Control Board . There were other members on the Committee drawn from officers from Departments like Forests, Soil Conservation, Environment and Remote sensing, as also from other concerned Institutes of the State. It appeared that things would start moving in the desired direction, though belatedly.
Whatever was prepared in respect of the final Draft, relevant records got damaged due to floods of 2014 in Srinagar Secretariat. It is appreciable that somehow a fresh draft was prepared but it appears nothing has been done about it further as the final draft is gathering dust in the official files in civil Secretariat because there is absolute dearth of coordination between the associated departments and the resultant torpidity in the matter . Not only this, fresh report on the State of Environment is in arrears since 2015 which is repugnant to the guidelines of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests.
Looking to the sensitivity of the problem, we expect that the Draft Policy will be looked into to give final touches to it so that a response is built to address environmental issues in accordance with the Policy framed for it. Let administrative accidie get replaced by prompt response and action in the matter.
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